Before & After snaps for inspiration

Hanging yellow

I decided to participate in the ‘Color me Happy’ project on Lil Magoolie. For January, the idea is to brighten up our bedrooms with yellow. Looking around my house, it’s clear I tend to stay away from yellow. There are no yellows in my closet either. I don’t know why yellow is an intimidating color to me, but I decided to embrace the challenge and diversify my color palette.

Here’s what our bedroom looked like about a year ago, a few weeks before Boo-Boo was born:

BEFORE: Pendant lamp (and wire) over crib

We previously had this beautiful pendant star lantern over the crib. It came in handy when we needed a little light in the wee hours of the morning. But as soon as Boo-Boo started to crawl and pull on the cord we took it down. So this corner has looked a little lame for the last few months. A mobile was a great solution.

I’m not going to lie; this project was a bit of a nightmare. However I would do it again but I’d change a few things, as I’ll explain below.

1. First off I made a trip to the fabric store for some yellow cloth as I had NONE in my spare fabric collection. I guess this is a testament to how intimidating yellow really is! I picked out three yellow patterns.

2. I read up on using fusible adhesive on one of my favorite blogs, Make it and Love it. I know it sounds dramatic, but this post changed my world.

3. I ironed the fabric to the Heat n Bond with a different material on each side. So I had three stiff sheets of double sided material.

4. Using a cookie cutter and an orange fabric marker, I traced stars onto the fabric. The orange marker worked great because if there was any little bit that didn’t get cut off, the color blended in with the fabric. I didn’t know how many I would need so I just did all that would fit.

5. I cut out all the stars.

6. I threaded each star with yellow thread and a couple of beads.

7. I tied each thread onto an embroidery hoop. I played around with the lengths and decided to hang them in descending height. I ended up with twenty hanging stars.

8. I tied 4 threads to the hoop at equal intervals and then tied them all together at the top to be the hanger. I realized that I should have done this before hanging the stars.

9. The hoop and the top knot were all sealed with Mod Podge.

Now we wake up to a bright and happy mobile every morning.

AFTER: Star mobile over crib

Things I would do differently:
* I would experiment with using embroidery thread because it would be easier to work with and hold a knot better than the slippery and delicate thread I used. I’m a pretty bad butterfingers and I kept dropping the pieces as I was tying them onto the hoop.
* I would plan ahead better and decide how many dangling threads I want and calculate their distance based on the circumference of the hoop. I’d attach the supporting threads first and fill in the dangles from there.
* I would figure out a better way to temporarily hang the hoop while I’m tying everything onto it. It fell a couple of times and de-tangling the threads is a mess.

Another note, after looking at these photos I think I’ll add the yellow basket back to the changing station to continue the color infusion.